Drink! Feck! Arse!

Er, sorry about that. Spent some more time watching "Father Ted" last night. While the Dougal character had the honor of making my Top 10 TV Idiots list, it's the drunken, abusive Father Jack that really makes the show. It's impressive how much mileage actor Frank Kelly is able to get out of a character whose dialogue consists 95% of shouting "Drink!", "Feck!", "Arse!" and "Girls!" at random.

But regardless, that's an appropriate sentiment for my feelings towards the weather at the moment.

I got up this morning and it looked nice. A few clouds in the sky, but sunny. I finally decided to take my bike down to the shop. Well, I first took it down the other day, and got air in the tires, but he was too busy to have a look at the fact that the gears aren't shifting, so he told me to brink it back later in the week. Trying to ride it home (now that it had air in the tires) I found that the chain is also slipping something fierce.

So, I go get the bike out of the back yard and as I'm starting off from the house, it starts to sprinkle. That continues the whole way down to the shop.

When I arrive and tell him of the problem, he says to me again, that he doesn't have time to look at it now, and further that if its the chain and the gears, it's likely to cost more than it's worth to fix. My 'free' bike is now looking anything but. But he says for me to chain it up to the post outside and he'll have a look at it later.

As I'm in the process of trying to chain it up, the sky just opens up and starts dumping all it's got on me. I get the bike chained and duck into a shop across the street to wait out the rain a bit. When it slows, I make my way back up the hill. As I'm walking in the door, the sun peeks out from the cloud again in all her glory.

I used to describe the springtime weather back in the midwest as "schizophrenic". It would amaze me how, usually in early-to-mid-April, there'd be a span where the temperature would swing 30 or 40 degrees back and forth for a few days in a row. It would not be uncommon to be wearing T-shirts and shorts one day, and have snow the next. When I first got here, I marvelled at how un-schizophrenic the weather here is. The entire time I've been here, the temperatures have very rarely travelled more than 10 degrees either side of 65.

But the weather here is no less fickle. It's the precipitation and cloud cover, not the temperature, and it's on a much shorter scale. It'll switch between sunny and downpours four or five times within a couple hour span at times. You don't know the definition of 'scattered showers' until you've lived in western Ireland.

As I was sitting here a few minutes ago, it was looking like it had cleared up, so I was going to head down to the farmer's market to have a look around. I got my wallet and was just about to walk out the door when it once again started to pour.

I think I'll stay inside for a bit longer.

Although it's looking rather nice out at the moment....


ps - "Feck", while often used as a socially acceptible alternative for a certain other word, is actually derived from an Irish word 'feic', which means 'to see'. 'Feck' is also used to mean to nab, or steal, as in "feck a loaf of bread".